On Thursday, 4 January 2018 at 08:09:27 UTC, Dan Partelly wrote:
Now my perception is that D tries hard to be both, with some regrettable consequences. Started as a GC language with language features which depend on GC, and a std which was done for a GC language and has dependency on GC. But it also envied the cars which can be driven off roads, so it allowed GC to be disabled. At the cost of being unable to use parts of the
Envy? Hardly. Being able to disable D's GC was a feature from early on. Phobos has been modified over the years to make it more compatible with that scenario, as was widely requested.
language, and whole parts of std. Then it got even more envious and got a -betterC mode whose raison d'etre is unclear, apart from some people saying it's Walter's toy, which crippled D even more, and made std a dubious proposition until someone goes through it step by step and see the traps.
The reason for -betterC is quite clear (and again, has nothing to do with envy): to make it easier to port C (and eventually C++) code to D, and to make D easier to use in environments where the runtime is a burden (e.g. OS kernels). It does not "cripple" D.
